Hell is Cold
by mgsylvester
Summary: Tony is angry. And Cap is freezing. They both pretend not to notice until they can't anymore.
1. Chapter 1

**So this started as my second feels attempt, but I'm currently like 100% blocked so I have no idea how it ended up where it did. Enjoy?!**

* * *

They both pretend not to notice when he falters.

Tony pretends he doesn't see it because he's _pissed_. This was the last time that stupid, old man told him what to do in his stupid old man voice. Tony sees him stumble but he pretends not to care because Tony can't let anything distract himself from his anger. He can't let any sympathy filter in because this is a discussion long overdue.

And as for Cap? Tony doesn't know why he pretends it didn't happen, and he frankly doesn't care. He watches as Cap tries to pull himself from the harbor and onto the dock, and he watches as Cap slips and falls back in. The man crashes into the water with a hiss and a slam and water splashes everywhere, while the thin layer of ice that covers the harbor cracks even more than it already has. It's not because of a lack of upper body strength.

Tony stomps down the deck carefully, trying not to let his shiny metal shoes loose traction with the warped, wet wood. It's too icy even for him not to practice caution. It's not the entrance he wants to make, peering at his feet as he slides down the long dock, and God knows Tony Stark is all about style. It makes him madder.

Cap hoists himself out of the water and finally, finally pulls his body over onto the dock. He slides onto his stomach, water mixing with the slushy ice and rests for a few moments. Tony sees his cue and takes it. "Going for a swim, Capsicle?" He taunts, and his joking is not light. It is full of malice, not unlike the arguing they had when they first met.

After New York ended and the wreckage had been cleared, Steve and Tony were not friends. Not even close. They tolerated each other because they had to, and argued whenever they could. But things hadn't gotten bad. Not yet at least. The resentment had been building up, and earlier today when Cap had tried to pull him to the harbor for backup when Tony was busy fighting with the other Avengers, Tony knew that this was the last straw.

Cap is still laying face-down on the freezing wooden boards, next to the unconscious villain who is also dripping wet. The conflict must have somehow gotten into the water. Tony doesn't care how. All he cares about is that the target has been taken down without his help, and he resents the orders to _get his ass over here, Stark, and that's not a suggestion_ even more.

"Tony," Cap grumbles, his voice a hoarse warning. Tony ignores it. He takes another slippery step and pops open his faceplate. The cold stings. His breath comes out in little white puffs.

"Seventy years not enough?" Tony asks, and some part of him knows that he's hitting below the belt and after the bell but he doesn't care _he doesn't care_, all he can see is his father telling him how _wonderful_ Steve Rogers is and all he can feel is how _wonderful _Steve Rogers _isn't_.

Cap picks his head up, his cowl almost black and saturated with water. It drips down his cheeks and paints his skin white.

They both pretend not to notice how he shivers.

Tony sees that his arms can barely support him as he picks himself off the ground, and Tony sees how violently his legs tremble for a moment before the living legend remembers that he's being watched. Tony sees and then cares a little, but all in all it doesn't affect him.

When Cap is finally standing, Tony is unpleasantly surprised to find that there is a dull anger burning in Cap's ice blue eyes. Beneath his wet cowl and between the layer of chalky, vaguely blue skin, there is an anger burning hotter than anything around them in the cold January wasteland.

They are mad at each other.

"Stark." Cap barks, "Dammit, where the hell were you?"

"You didn't need the backup, Gramps. They did. Sorry to defy you." Tony says. But he isn't. He's not sorry. He's never sorry, because Tony Stark knows what he's doing and therefore Tony Stark is mostly always right.

The sky is white with the impending snowfall, and the shadows are maddeningly bright and growing increasingly colder.

Cap's voice is strained when he speaks next, and Tony comes thundering to a halt. "I needed you."

* * *

They both pretend not to notice when he falters.

Steve doesn't notice because he physically just _can't_. All he can focus on his getting out of the water and getting out and then he's falling again and it's not from 35,000 feet but it might as well be.

And the water swells up around his head. For a moment he is choking and screaming and Peggy's broken _Steve's_ are all that echo against his ears. But he can't answer her. He can't answer her because he's already dying and there's ice water in his lungs. He can't answer her because he's doesn't want to die but he is and there's no other choice and the plane just sinks and sinks and sinks and sinks…

Cap bobs above the water for a moment, and reality comes crashing back. The Avengers had been fighting an onslaught of robots. He'd gone after their creator, who was nearby observing the wreckage. He'd called for backup and it never came.

He ended up in the water.

And now he's pulling himself up once more, gloved hands struggling to find purchase on the slick wood. When he finally does, he hauls himself up. The water makes him heavy, and rolls off his suit in torrents as he finally slides onto firm ground on his stomach.

He lays there for a moment because he is _cold_. It has been several months since he was thawed out.

He is over this. He is not cold and he is not scared and he did not just crash and there is no ice. He is over this. This is not happening. He is Captain America and Captain America is the burning light of freedom or whatever bullshit Tony liked to bring up when he was in a giving mood. Burning light. Not freezing ice.

"Going for a swim, Capsicle?" Steve is surprised at Tony's voice, but he supposes that he shouldn't be. They'd been angry at each other for a long time now. The pot was going to boil over sooner or later. That was a nice thought. Boiling.

"Tony." He grumbles, unsure of whether or not that is a greeting or an oath. He figures he should pick himself up and face the argument.

"Seventy years not enough?"

The comment sends Cap flying, back across and endless tundra of time. He is on a train and there is no more Bucky. He is in a plane and there is no more Peggy.

Seventy years was either too much or not nearly enough.

He begins to try to pick himself up.

They both pretend not to notice how he shivers.

But Steve does. Steve shivers a lot now. At night when he wakes up and the blankets are gone. When the air conditioning is just a smidge too high. When the fridge opens or the ice cubes in his scotch clink against the glass.

He swallows those thoughts. He lets his fear make him angry. "Where the hell were you?" He asks. The man standing, fuming, in front of him may not know it, but that is the most important question that Steve feels he has ever asked.

"You didn't need backup, Gramps. They did." Tony's sarcastic apology is swallowed out by something pressing Cap's inner panic button.

Something is rolling up his throat, big and bulky and scratchy and he knows what it is he just thought he'd never feel it again. The ball picks up steam as it passes his lungs, leaving behind barbed wires of tearing, itchy ice. "I needed you." Steve says, pressing down his cough. He doesn't realize how desperate, how weak he sounds until Tony hesitates.

Steve is ten years old. Steve has asthma. It's so bad that he has pneumonia and his fever hadn't dipped below a hundred in twelve hours and he knows that this is probably the end. His mom pulls sweaty bangs from his hair and he shivers at her touch. He is burning up on the outside but inside him, his white blood cells fight and his body pumps blood but everything is hallow and dark and empty and he's cold. Very, very cold.

He's not ten years old anymore. But he's still coughing.

* * *

The fighting had been brief but intense.

The Avengers had found themselves in the middle of a mild battle full of robots, ones that shot flames and were terrorizing a port city somewhere in Canada. It was the dead of winter, and the snow was thick and blinding.

Steve had kept focused, so far. He kept the cold at a distance, pretending that it was not there. He'd given orders and his voice had not wavered.

And then his team was fighting, flawlessly, effortlessly, together in tandem like they always did. He was proud of them. They might not get along, but it wasn't shown on the battlefield.

He caught wind of the creator of all this havoc and suddenly Cap was running, his shield a cold weight in his hand, the wind biting at the bits of exposed skin on his face.

He hit the deck, cornering the man, and that should have been enough for the great Captain America. It should have been enough to take the man down.

But there was ice. The dock was covered with ice and the long-stagnant harbor had a thin layer of whiteness along it.

They fought.

They fought and then the man gained an upper hand, and grasped his hand as their weight toppled backwards.

It was like Bucky all over again. Steve watched as the crash hurdled closer, his arm outstretched. But this time Steve had fallen too. This time they both hit. The water was dark and he heard hissing and crashing and felt a pressure he'd only felt once before in his life.

Whenever the subject came up, Cap told them that his memories of the day he crashed were hazy. And Captain America never lies. Except when it comes to himself.

He remembers every moment. Every agonizing temptation for oxygen, every desperate struggle for air that wouldn't come. He could feel it when the tissue in his fingers died because his heart couldn't get blood to them. He could taste the salt as the water flooded into his mouth, into his lungs. He remembers every last one of his shuddering, slowing heartbeats, because though the blood didn't pump, the fear did.

Before he knew it, Steve had his arms around the man, and he was squeezing, scrambling for air. Something popped beneath his fingers, and it might be a rib, or it might be the sound of a plane hitting the water.

* * *

There is one agonizing moment of silence, in which Cap's eye bulge and his hand absently flutters up to his chest.

And Tony watches in complete and utter horror as Steve opens his mouth and no sound comes out. And then the sound comes.

It is not a wheezy, soft cough like one gets with the flu or swallowing wrong. This one is deep, wet and weary, like Steve is scraping the salty-muck off the bottom of his lungs. Tony stays petrified, expecting Steve to stop sooner or later and continue to yell at him, but he doesn't. He just keeps going and going until Tony knows for a complete fact that something is wrong.

The anger dies and the concern filters in.

That's when Cap hits his knees.

Captain America, ever strong and unflinching, collapses before Tony Stark onto the cold deck of the harbor. He lurches forward even more.

Tony immediately reacts, letting steel hit wood and saddling close enough to Steve to put a hand on his back. He wants it to soothe him, maybe make him feel just better enough to be mad at Tony. Maybe then they can resume being mad at each other.

It's so much easier that way. It's easier to hate each other than to actually get down to the complicated reasons of why they do.

Cap doesn't stop, he won't stop, and it's beginning to scare Tony. His heart beats in his ears, and the only sound is the wet, deep, throaty coughs shaking Steve's chest.

It only gets worse when the blood comes. Something clicks in Tony's mind when he sees the first hints of viscous scarlet drip from Steve's mouth. By the time the conclusion is fully formed, it is dripping down his chin and dotting the ice beneath him.

"Stop." Tony pleads. "Stop, Steve, please. There's nothing in your lungs." He doesn't. Tony's voice starts to shake. "Steve, come on, _stop_."

Blood sprays the ground around them. But now Steve is making a conscious effort to stop, and they are slowing, but they are still malicious. "Steve…"Tony begins, his voice warm but his thoughts in disarray.

"Just…" Steve manages, "Go….Away…" He sputters, the coughing dying only to start up again. Now, Cap looks like he's a vampire whose had a fresh meal, his face completely pale, blood speckling his face.

This is terrifying to Tony. "No." He is stubborn. He's always been stubborn.

Steve's chest collapses in with one last cough, and Steve slumps forward, digging his hands below his cowl.

He takes it off. It's half soggy. But the other half is stiff with frozen water.

Cap tosses it aside. And Steve does not care when it slides across the deck and into the water, where it sinks, lower and lower, until it hits the bottom with a muted crunch of ice and blood.

* * *

There is salt in his mouth. It's everywhere. In his eyes. In his pores. He just wants it _out_.

Along with the salt water in his lungs. He'd do anything to get it out, to make the pain stop, to be able to _breathe _again. He is willing to cough up his own lungs and squeeze them out if it means there will be no more seawater in them.

"Go away," he moans again, and feels that the blood on his face has smeared on his hands. It is warm. His fingers are cold, blue-cold, and his wonders if the rest of his blood is that warm. He wonders what a warm death would feel like. Dying in blood would be warm.

It's not the first time he's wished for that.

Steve is aware that Tony has spoken something through the comms. Now, Tony scrutinizes him. "No."

The cold is pain. So much pain. It hurts and it stings and it pushes against his subconscious and it makes him _wish _for the blood. It makes him _wish_ for the oblivion, for the promise of nothingness, because at least that would be a whole hell of a lot easier than this.

There's a game, nowadays, called Would You Rather. There's a popular question within that game that speaks to whether or not you'd rather die of hypothermia or heat stroke.

Steve has already died of hypothermia once.

"Please, Howa—Tony, just leave me alone." Steve feels more coughing coming. He feels the shivers wrack his body.

The worst of it has yet to start, he knows.

* * *

They both pretend not to notice that he's crying.

Maybe Cap doesn't even know, because his face his so frozen and there's blood everywhere. But Tony does. He bristles when Steve almost calls him his father's name, but then he notices the crystalline sparks glint from Steve's pale face.

It makes Tony's hands shake. Because he feels helpless, with nothing he can do and no one else he can call other than his team, who are already en route.

He's hated the man for so long. He's hated every patriotic bone in his body. Tony's hated that even his body _bruises_ in red, white and blue. Tony hates every word comes out of Cap's mouth, and he hates how sincere and old-fashioned he is, and he hates that Cap is always right and perfect.

And he hates how he's slumped forward right now, crazed by a trauma so deep that even seventy years couldn't heal it.

"Help is coming." Tony assures him, his breath coming out in puffs. The cold is seeping through to his exposed skin. He doesn't like it. It's beginning to feel colder. The wind has picked up, swinging a winter storm toward the coastline.

"No, just, just, _please_ go away." Steve is pleading with him and it's so goddamned pathetic and so goddamned heartbreaking that Tony wants to punch himself for every last comment he's ever made to or about Steve.

"We're not going to leave you, Captain." Tony says. It feels like the most important thing he's ever told the other man.

* * *

Steve feels it coming. He's felt it before.

He's gasping and he's coughing and maybe this time there's air but it's not enough. It would never be enough. Nothing was enough.

He feels his fingers first. They are dead meat, slowly throbbing and then loosing feeling altogether. With shaking hands, he sticks one set of five frozen digits underneath a glove and edges it off.

His fingers are blue. Blue like the water and blue like the ice he woke up in and blue like his eyes and god_damn _why is everything so fucking blue?

He tries to wiggle them. They don't move.

Panic sends him coughing again, because half of him is stuck in 1944 and he's screaming and screaming but his lungs are too full of water to function and his fingers are freezing. His fingers are freezing. Freezing.

He wipes his fingers in blood. The warmth stings so bad he gasps, his breathe a heavy cloud of white in the air around him. He manipulates his hands into fists. His palms still aren't warm enough to keep the tissue alive.

In his time he'd be thrown away in some loony bin, locked up, thrown away. He feels like he deserves such treatment. He's always been weak, always been thin and strangled and stomped over. He was weak enough to let Bucky fall. Bucky, his best friend, the last of his family. He was weak enough to always find the ultimatum. Either Bucky falls or the mission fails. Either he puts the plane in the water or the whole world crumbles to ashes. One life or another, not both, just one. He was never strong enough to figure out how to do both.

Stark was. Stark, always manipulating, bending rules and stretching boundaries had done the exact same thing he did seventy years ago. And he'd _survived. _And _he _was the one kneeling beside Steve, a hand on his back that Cap couldn't physically shove off, one because it was tiring, and two because there was still warmth left in Tony's repulsors.

And it _sucked_. Because Cap had now found another one of his ultimatums. Live or die, give in or get out. He'd always been the one to take the noble choice.

He doesn't want to do it anymore.

Life is just so _exhausting_.

And if he dies now, he won't be cold ever again.

* * *

Tony feels his gauntlets vibrating, and he knows it's because Steve is shuddering so violently. Every now and then he coughs weakly, but mostly Cap just stays there, shivering, his eyes blank and gray and his mouth dripping blood.

Tony doesn't like the way that Cap is looking but not seeing. Tony doesn't like that he's not responding to some of the things he says. Tony doesn't like the fact that there is one fat snowflake falling near his eye and Clint, in his ear, says medical is still five minutes out.

"Jesus, Steve." Tony mutters, "Come on, don't give up on me now." He says and the words ring true. Steve has a thousand yard stare that's telling him that for possibly for the first time in Captain America's life he's not fighting for it. "Fuck, Steve. We need you. Who else is going to keep me in line?" Steve doesn't respond. Tony watches as Cap's head bows, frozen hair shifting over his brow. One bloodied, blue hand traces the star on his own chest. "You fight that cold, do you hear me? Steve?"

Steve is breathing heavily. His eyes quint closed, his face screwing up, and then Steve lifts his head again. His eyes blink, pupils dilating and then whispers, "I don't belong here."

Tony blanches. "Steve?"

"D'you believe in Heaven, How-Tony?" Steve says, his face a mutilated grimace, his words, oddly, innocently hopeful. "Ma always said there was." Steve squints, coughing slightly. More blood bubbles at his lips. His serum charged lungs have managed to scrape together enough to bloody his entire esophagus. "Sometimes in the winters when the heat would go out, Bucky used to tell me that Hell is cold and Heaven was warm. Never believed him."

The cold has obviously gotten to Cap's brain. Tony is confused, and it adds to the fear. Tony feels the lump in his throat. It is dead. Black. Cold.

"Stop it. Stop this right now Steve. Don't you dare talk like that. Don't you dare give in." Tony demands and they both pretend they don't hear how ragged Tony's voice is.

It is as desperate as a man fighting a losing battle against a fate that has already been decided.

* * *

Steve feels warm.

It's a nice feeling, really. It starts in his extremities, his fingers, his boot-clad, soaking wet toes, and the warmth creeps up through his dead veins. It's not the serum, because Steve is not wounded. He's just cold. And there's only so much the serum can do. It can keep him alive if he continues to stay cold, wrapped in a cocoon of ice, frozen like an old pale of ice cream. But he isn't in the water, and there is no ice inside him. His organs are cold, but not frozen.

They are simply shutting down.

He doesn't mind, really, because that means it's almost over, and all the pain he's had is fading. Black spots dance along his peripheral vision. He doesn't mind. He's going to see them soon. He's going to regain everything he lost. It will be beautiful and unbroken and warm, because Heaven is warm, and that's where he's going. Ma always told him that.

He still doesn't like the cold, but it's almost over. He's so close. So very close. And he wants it and he hungers for it and all he wants is to be warm again and breathe in air that doesn't sting.

Steve knows that in normal cases of hypothermia, you get warm, and then you go cold. As in, no heartbeat, no breathing, dead like the ice water he fell into. Last time he hadn't been able to get warm because he'd been dead before that even happened. Drowning had killed him faster, he supposes.

The snow falls harder.

* * *

They both pretend not to notice when Cap falls forward. Or rather, Cap doesn't notice, because he's already somewhere far away.

"Goddammit Steve," Tony cries, his voice taught and tight and _wet_.

He shucks off a gauntlet and with one shoulder supporting his captain, he looks for a pulse. His fingers bite against the stiff, frozen fabric at his neck and press into the taught skin beneath his chin. There is still a pulse.

Tony doesn't know what to do. He's hated the man for so long, so very long, only because he'd never had anyone who cared about him so much. His father had gone on and on about Cap, and always spent all his time looking for the man, never even sparing a glance at his own son. But Steve had always been the one to ask if he was hurt after battles. To ease the Jack Daniels out of his hand after a rough night. Tony had thought that he'd hated the man, but the hatred had just been an embarrassed cover-up for the amount of respect he had for the man who took up most of his father's time.

"Listen to me," Tony demands. "This is not the end. I—" his voice breaks, because he knows it is and he wonders if there was really anything he could have done. Neither of them could have stopped the onslaught of hypothermia. Not really. Just because Steve had evidently given up didn't mean that there was any reason not to. There was no way to fight this one, and Steve was very good about picking his battles.

Medical arrives and the team rushes forward and there's suddenly blankets and talk of warm fluids and a flurry of heat and warmth and panic, and Cap is wrenched from Tony's arms.

Tony is not a part of this. He's not a part of it when Clint tugs him up, or when the voices carry across the now-blizzard-like conditions, because all he sees is white and all he hears is static.

White like the snow and white like Cap's bloody face and white like the emotions inside of him that threaten to pull him away. Just fucking _white_. White and static and unfathomable, depthless sadness.

They all pretend not to notice that Tony is sobbing.

* * *

**AN: So what did you think? **

**There's an alternative ending/extension of the piece that I have if you all want to read it. **

**Thanks for the read, and as always, review! Helpful suggestions to help improve my writing are always, always welcome.  
**


	2. Part Two

**I still have no idea how this ended up where it did. Anyway, here is the awaited part two... **

* * *

There is darkness.

When Steve opens his eyes, it is dark, and he feels almost as if he hasn't opened his eyes at all.

"You're late." A warm, British, and painfully familiar voice echoes from all around him.

He looks around, confused. His head is on straight. His body is warm. His blood is pumping. He can breathe. It feels calm. There is no more white and there is no more blue. He sinks into the darkness for a few moments before he realizes that the voice was Peggy's.

"Peggy?" He whirls, and she's standing there, dressed modernly, in a pair of blue jeans and a dark red, v-cut blouse.

If he thought that Heaven wouldn't hurt, he was apparently wrong. It is warm put it is not pain free.

He is reminded of everything he missed, seventy years' worth of memories. And for what? A team that wouldn't follow his orders? Two cold, lonely endings?

He had _finally _had the potential for something whole, something happy. It had been the last months of the war, and he'd had Peggy and Howard and a whole team of friends. And he'd finally beaten the bully. And then he'd died.

Because of this sudden anger at his modern life, he ignores the odd sense of déjà vu he feels at his last thoughts. He ignores the fact that he's not sure which century he was really referring to.

"You coming?" Peggy asks, inclining her head to the side.

He pauses. Remembers. The ice, the water, the cold, the blackness, the coughing, the blood, everything. He realizes that he is Captain America. He realizes that Tony was sobbing and his own hands weren't working and now it's black.

He realizes that somehow he'd given in.

* * *

Tony has seen the Disnyfied version of this story. He knows how it ends. The ice recedes and the world is warm once more. He knows that the good guys win and the bad guys don't, and everything, _everything _works out.

The only problem with Tony's life is that life is not a simple trick of animation. Nor is it a flow of scenes into one another, a song for each emotion, a bursting, smiling climax in which the smoke recedes evenly and the sun shines once more. His life, Iron Man's life, is a blur of bruises and violence and small hints of friendship. His life is pain and his own blanket of humor. His life is bones, loss, blood that's spilled when the tide comes in and the water is too cold.

"Tony." The voice is quiet, timid, somewhere above his left ear. "Tony?" Another word, another cloud as the warm breath hits the freezing air.

In the corner of his eyes, he watches the ambulance pull away. The drivers do not bother to turn on their lights.

"Tony." The voice repeats, and it is Clint, tugging on his arm, trying to get him to stand. Tony blinks, and realizes the blurriness is not because his eyes have stopped working. The blizzard is on in full-force.

"I don't…" he begins, finding his voice from somewhere deep inside him. He cannot process what just happened, mostly because he does not want to. His eyes sluggishly flick up toward Clint's. "He's dead, isn't he." It isn't a question.

"Not yet." Clint replies quietly, his voice even, almost too controlled. "Come on."

"Where?" His voice is still raw, and he realizes it has something to do with the way his face is wet in a frozen sort of way.

"Following the ambulance. Nat's acquiesced a car." Clint looks uncomfortable, his face twitching ever so slightly. Tony can see how worried Clint is pretending not to be, but he's not sure why. There's no longer a reason to be worried.

"I don't…" he tries again, but the words still don't come out.

He likes alcohol. A lot. He likes it because the numbness makes him pretend that he has no capacity to feel, that his life doesn't affect him. He likes the sting against his throat, the gradual feeling of weightlessness as his personality drops away and he becomes the Tony Stark who has no ghosts. There was no better feeling than being numb, he thought.

Numb comes at a cost, however.

He is numb now. His blood beats slow and his breathe comes even slower. He can't feel anything within him. He's reached a state that Tony Stark might have once _strived _to attain. But now all he can feel is empty, and it's the most excruciating things he's ever known.

There is nothing to pretend not to notice anymore.

* * *

Life's about learning to smile through the tears, he's learned.

Once upon a time there was a bar full of drunk soldiers, a piano playing something raunchy, bellows of slurring voices. Steve was in the corner and Bucky was by his side. They were in the middle of the war and Steve had a seeping wound from a HYDRA weapon that hadn't healed yet, but Bucky was still calling him Kid like he was five feet nothing again, and Steve was smiling because that's the only thing he could do.

And then once upon another time there was a quiet room in which the only sound was the sweeping of the dust ridden floor. Steve was looking down at the foreign food in front of him, his hand cupped over his jaw, his thoughts mentally reviewing the past few days. He glanced up, around toward his team in various states of ravenous exhaustion, and the most random things came into his mind.

_"Are you really that dense?" Natasha was looking around the room, her glare potent and her stature angry, "SHIELD monitors potential threats." _

_ Bruce looked incredulous, "_Captain America _is on threat watch?"_

_ "We _all_ are." She said, still giving the group a look like they were the stupidest people in the world._

_ Tony had thought that to be a good time to butt in. He directed his commentary toward Cap. "You're on that list?" His face was smiling but his words held the promise of a punch line, "Are you above or below angry bees?"_

_ Steve hadn't been in the mood, and had just about had it with Stark's humor. "I swear, Stark, one more wisecrack out of you…" He let the threat trail into nothingness, unwilling to actually threaten the man. He was annoying but he wasn't evil._

_ Tony put on an affronted look, and hollered in his most innocent voice, "Verbal threat!" he called, reminding Steve of a child in class, waving his hand to get the teacher's attention in order to be a tattle-tale, "Threatening. I'm being threatened!"_

Steve feels the smile on his face. He feels the exhaustion in his wounds and in his blood. Before he knows it, his shoulders are shaking and his lips are being pressed together. Weird looks are suddenly being cast toward him.

He lets go.

With a snort he is laughing, tired and burned out and probably dehydrated. Tony casts him a look and gasps, "It _smiles!_"

But Steve's laughing so hard he can't breathe, and it's a pleasant sort of feeling. If he could feel this way his whole life, he would never want to breathe again. Especially when he learns that laughter is infectious, and the ever-stoic, half lidded Clint is smiling too. "What?" He asks, his voice tired but interested.

Steve can hardly get it out, "Angry bees," he finally gasps, leaning his head back to chuckle.

He hears more laughter, and it's Bruce this time, snorting through his glasses. It grows. When Steve looks around, he finds they are all giggling, even Clint, who probably has no idea what he's even talking about. It gets to the point where the unshed tears in eyes could be considered tears of joy, and the bloodless faces and raw wounds all but fade away.

No matter the destruction, no matter the pain and the blood and the fear, they are a team.

* * *

Tony still doesn't move, not when Natasha pulls the car as close as she can to the dock, and not when Clint continually tells him that they need to get going. They're both worried about Steve, and it's a whole hell of a lot easier to be worried while waiting in a hospital room. At least then the spies won't feel so out of place.

Tony isn't worried or nervous or apprehensive at all. Maybe he should be, but he'd have to have hope before he had worry.

"What's the status?" Clint asks, and Tony hears it in his ear rather than on his left.

Bruce, who calmed down enough to ride with Cap, paused before answering. "Heartbeat's too slow."

"Flat-lining?" Clint swallows. Heavily.

"Not yet."

"How long?" Clint asks, and the question doesn't need to be continued, because they all know he's wondering how much time until the peaks and valleys on that heart monitor become only one long, slow plateau of consistency.

Bruce lowers his voice before he delivers the next line. It's almost like Tony is a child and the adults are talking about things he shouldn't hear. "Thirty, forty seconds."

_See?_ Tony thinks. _I told you so_.

Clint cusses. Natasha says something low and dark in Russian. Tony finally speaks. "I don't…" he still can't finish the sentence, and this time he knows it's because he's starting it wrong. He swallows. He starts again.

"I did this."

* * *

Regret is bitter.

Steve remembers Peggy, the way that her lips formed around his name, the way her smile lit her eyes and the curls dusted her shoulders. He sees her standing in front of him, and with a sense of duty he shakes his head. "I still need a rain check on that dance." He replies, his voice coming out odd in all the wrong places.

He cannot abandon what he has started.

Life is hard. That is the simple truth. But life is also what you make it. His life had been one painful punch after another. Everything he did was so damn hard and overly complicated. He'd lost everyone and everything, including himself.

But Steve is Captain America. Steve is the epitome of perseverance. And there is always something around that corner. The dawn always brings a new day.

And maybe he has to deal with Tony calling him Capsicle and Natasha threatening to kill Clint, and Bruce throwing around big words he's never heard of and something called a Bifrost. And maybe sometimes that's too much. And maybe sometimes he misses his old team.

But the past is and always will be the past.

And though he is a man out of it, this is simply not his time.

Peggy smiles at him. "You're still you, you know. Kind. Compassionate. Loyal. Dutiful." She looks away, and it hurts Steve, more than she could ever imagine. "There's always more people to save." Steve's not sure whether or not she's complimenting him or pointing out that this is a never-ending vicious cycle that he now has the chance to break. There will be evil long after Captain America, no matter how long there is a Captain America.

"I miss you." He says, instead of replying.

"You don't have to." Her voice is broken bone.

But he does.

* * *

There's a moment before he wakes up when he feels the regret again. Not because he feels he made the wrong decision, and not really because he misses Peggy, but simply because, as consciousness comes back to him, he feels the cold once more.

It still is not pleasant.

But at the same time, it reminds him of how beautiful life really is. He can feel. He can breathe. Life is difficult, sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth living. He's learned that the hard way. That has been the only way that he's gotten through all the trauma. The simple fact that he is not alone, no matter how lost he feels, and the complete truth that there is so much more to Steve Rogers than just the ice.

"Thirty, forty seconds," he hears, and then the slow beeps of a heart monitor filter through his brain. It's still dark, and his limbs are still leaden, but he knows the voice is Bruce's. His head is spinning, and the monitor is all-together too slow, but Steve clings to the voice. He clings to the warmth. It hurts.

He draws in a wet breath, his lungs chaffed and frost-bitten, and for a moment he wonders why they didn't put the baseball game this time. He dips back below the line of conscious, only to realize that he's in an ambulance, Bruce is by his side, and he's not about to wake up in a fake SHIELD version of 1940s Brooklyn.

"I don't—" he hears, and the voice reminds him of the dock. Of the water. Of complete and terrifying fear, of icy anger and white snow. He can feel his heart rate slow just thinking about it.

He fights.

"I did this." He hears, and the voice is cracking. Like the ice.

Something presses Cap's inner panic button once more, and he feels the same ball of barbed wire climb up his throat. It tastes like salt and bloody snow, and it hurts his charred insides as it begins it's slow, easy commute up from his lungs. He knows that when it comes out, his eyes will fly open, and the cycle will start over again.

This time he's not going to let it.

Therefore, when the cough reaches his lips and his eyes bulge underneath solid eyelids, he forces it all away—the glacial feeling, the suffocation, the memories of red—and instead forms words. "No you didn't."

They escape him like a wingless bird, weak and pathetic and breathy, but he says them nonetheless, his eyes still cold, his heartbeat still too slow to allow him to move.

There is an intake of breath next to him. Two fingers land underneath his chin. "We thought you were—" Bruce says, aghast. Beside him, the heart monitor picks up a few beats per minute.

Steve coughs, "Always…underestimating me." He manages a small smile.

"Fuck, Rogers." He hears Clint in his ear. The sound is full of awe. "Playing it pretty close to the line, don't you think?"

"The only way I…know how." Steve responds, feeling his fingertips grasp weakly at the wool blankets that cover him. In his mind's eye, they are still blue and dead, but he can move them now. It's an odd feeling. "Tony?" he finally stutters, knowing that his voice is shaking because he's shivering. His heart rate drops a little.

"I don't…" Tony says, and his voice makes Steve feel colder.

"Stop." Steve commands, and the fact that he can still bring Captain America out from within him and put him on gives him a surge of strength.

He is still cold. But Tony is colder.

Steve's voice is stern, but he manages to sound angry only because Tony had given up hope. He's not angry that he fell in, or angry that he almost died. Why would he be? Tony is Tony, and he wouldn't have disobeyed a serious order like that one unless it was important.

"Steve…" he begins, but Steve cuts him off, his voice growing stronger, the wool blankets becoming more real as the cold sinks in and his brain wakes up.

"You think a little ice can keep me down?" He asks. His eyes peek open a bit. The light is stabbing, and the air is frigid, and the only thing he can hang onto is the unstable sound of the heart monitor somewhere over his head. "I've got seventy years that proves otherwise."

* * *

**Sooo...yeah. I think this is done. Not 100 percent positive, but sometimes there's art in leaving things unsaid, right? Maybe that was the point of this little adventure. **

**Anyway, review! **


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